


watch the world go by

by shini_amaryllis



Series: heavy is the head that wears the crown [3]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Multi, Parent Tony Stark, Steve Rogers Is Bi, Tony Stark Acting as Peter Parker's Parental Figure, Tony as Peter's actual dad, YOU HEARD IT HERE FIRST FOLKS, basically Steve and Tony meeting in a museum and talking about some stuff, thats basically it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-13
Updated: 2019-10-13
Packaged: 2020-12-14 09:23:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21013478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shini_amaryllis/pseuds/shini_amaryllis
Summary: Steve Rogers was having a hard time adjusting and he knew it, but no amount of therapy could fix how he felt as a man placed out of time.





	watch the world go by

It was jarring to wake up in a world you barely recognized where all the people you’d known were either dead or nearly so. Steve Rogers was having a hard time adjusting and he knew it, but no amount of therapy could fix how he felt as a man placed out of time.

Some days he wondered if that would ever change or if he was doomed to feel that way until the day he died. And other days it felt like he was breathing new air and walking down new paths to places he’d never been that were familiar echoes to what he remembered.

Technology was the biggest culture shock for Steve, he wouldn’t lie. He wouldn’t say that he was technophobic, just that he didn’t really understand hardly any of it. The computers were the easiest to manage, so far, but Fury had assured him that once he got used to things, it would get easier.

Sometimes Steve wasn’t so sure.

He pulled his cap down slightly over his face as he walked through the Smithsonian. It was probably considered a little egotistical to go to a museum that had an entire exhibit on him, but it was the one familiar thing to Steve.

He was watching a black and white film of him with his barbershop quartet -casually as he walked through- when a voice caught him.

“Dad, did Grandpa Howard create the vibranium in the shield?”

Steve barely remembered what the material had been called that made his shield but he was absolutely certain that it wasn’t something that had been made public. He turned his head just slightly. It was a pair, a father and son and there was something distinctly _familiar_ about the man’s appearance…

“Nah, vibranium is a naturally occurring metal, but you’d never find it outside of Wakanda, in Africa. My dad had to fork over a lot of money to get some and even that was barely enough to make a small shield.”

The first thing he’d done when he’d woken up was find out if anyone he knew was still around. Peggy was dementia-ridden and in a nursing home, getting closer to death every day, but everyone else…they were gone.

Howard Stark had been killed in a car accident with his wife, leaving behind a son who had only recently turned Stark Industries away from weapon manufacturing while taking the name of Ironman. But Steve wasn’t sure if he was all arrogance, like Howard, or something else entirely.

Tony Stark noticed his attention and dropped his hand where it had been ruffling his kid’s hair, eyeing Steve shrewdly before he recognized him, his eyebrows raising slightly, before taking a few steps forward and holding his hand out. “Captain.”

Steve’s mouth twitched. “Stark.”

“Looking pretty spry for a ninety-something.” There was a gleam in Tony’s eyes that made Steve chuckle.

“Thanks,” Steve said, faintly amused, before his eyes dropped to the boy close to Tony’s side. The boy shared a great deal with his father, Steve noticed, they had the same eyes and hair, but Steve thought the boy was a great deal more curious than his father.

“This is my son,” Tony offered helpfully, “Peter.”

Steve knelt down to offer Peter his hand. “Hello, Peter, my name’s Steve, I used to know your grandpa.”

For some reason that made him scowl deeply. “My grandpa wasn’t a nice person.”

Steve shifted slightly in surprise, glancing up Howard’s son and was even more surprised to see the thin smile on Tony’s lips.

“Cap,” Tony said, “why don’t I buy you some coffee?”

* * *

“Must be weird for you,” Tony said, his eyes fixed over towards where Peter was sitting with his friends -MJ and Ned- who’d both run off through the museum before Tony could wrangle them back in, though plying them with ice cream did the trick, Ned and Peter gesticulating excitedly while MJ snorted into her ice cream sundae. “Coming back after all this time.”

“Depends on the day,” Steve admitted with a sigh, “my last few months in the war weren’t the greatest, not for me, anyways…I woke up and they told me we won, but they didn’t say what we lost.”

Tony hummed, taking a sip of his coffee, watching Steve pull out an old compass. The picture within it was old and black and white, but he could tell that it was a man and there was something tragic held in Steve’s eyes.

_Oh._

“What was his name?” Tony asked finally, jerking Steve out of his thoughts, nodding to the compass. “Your…_beau?”_ Boyfriend sounded too modern for someone who fought in World War II.

Steve’s mouth twitched faintly, but Tony could see the tension there; same-sex relationships probably would’ve gotten him into more trouble back then, than now, not that there weren’t bigots…but some of them had to have died out since then. “Bucky, Bucky Barnes…we grew up together…I actually broke him out of a POW camp during the war.”

Tony snorted. “_Romantic.”_

Steve shrugged. “He thought so…but he was also a bit miffed that I was taller than him, then.”

Tony rolled his eyes in amusement. “I’ll _bet.”_

They both had a small chuckle together.

“Tony,” Steve used the name cautiously, even though Tony had given him permission to use it freely, “you don’t have to answer this if you don’t want to, but…what did your son mean about Howard?”

Tony’s eyes darkened immediately. “Ah. _That.”_

For a moment, Steve thought he wouldn’t answer, and he could understand if he didn’t want to, that was fine, too.

“I don’t know what my father was like during the war, but he had impossibly high standards of me and tended towards physical abuse when I didn’t measure up,” Tony admitted easily, which was something he felt he could do better towards someone he didn’t know.

“_Jesus,”_ Steve muttered, sitting back in shock.

“I had a drinking and drug problem for a while,” Tony added, almost as an afterthought, “but I’m down to drinking only in moderation, that’s the deal I made.”

“Deal?” Steve arched an eyebrow, following Tony’s gaze to where his son was laughing.

“I share custody of Peter with his aunt, and May only wants the best for him, and I do, too,” Tony smiled and it seemed to take years off his face. “I had to ‘clean up my act’, so to speak.”

Steve nodded in understanding, looking over to the kid in question. “He seems like a sweet kid.”

“Oh, he _is,”_ Tony assured him, “and he’s probably gonna end up smarter than me…I can only lord my PhDs over him for _so long.”_

They both laughed and the present somehow seemed less foreboding.

**Author's Note:**

> follow me on @harpers-tartarus


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